A Charles Day wrote a post for Spectator Blogs the other day claiming that the EU had a legal duty to negotiate and conclude a deal with us. His argument was based on the words of Article 50, which he had presumably spent years staring at until they came off the page 3-D fashion and swam before his eyes to offer this amazing revelation that nobody else had ever noticed. It is clutching at a straw so thin that you need an electron microscope to see it. The inventors of graphene are probably looking nervously at each other.
Mr Day suggested:
"Any lawyer can tell you this now, because Article 50 says this:
“2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State”.
"The key words here are ‘the Union shall’. Not the UK ‘shall’. Not the Brexiteers ‘shall’. The EU ‘shall’.
"The legal duty has always been on the EU to conclude a Withdrawal Agreement with us. There’s no legal duty on the UK. Let me be very clear: there is a binding legal obligation upon the EU to provide us with what the media call ‘a deal’. Not only shall they negotiate, but they shall 'conclude' one."
I write about this firstly to show how unbelievably desperate some Brexiteers are to make sure we get an acceptable deal and the ridiculous arguments they put forward to show the EU in a bad light, apparently working against their own treaty.
One only has to think about this for a millisecond to realise how silly it is. Under his interpretation we simply have to refuse all possible proposals until the EU comes up with one that suits us. The EU use the word 'shall' extensively but no same person has ever taken it that they 'shall' do something means including damaging their own interests. This is not even to mention they have offered us umpteen deals anyway.
However, don't take my word that it's nonsense, have a look at this robust response by K A Armstrong, Professor of European Law at the University of Cambridge.
The second reason I write about it is because of something which the professor himself missed and that is - who is Charles Day? I googled his name to find out and was surprised to find others asking the same question. There is very little about him. Even Muckrack, where you can usually find something on journalists or people who write for national publications has very little beyond a list of articles, all for The Spectator. Some people have speculated the name is a pseudonym:
It's the strangest thing, but it seems impossible to find anything about the 'Journalist' Charles Day on the web. It's almost as if he's a pseudonym.— David Winn (@mrdavidwinn) August 4, 2019
Some people even think it's a pseudonym for the editor of The Spectator, Fraser Nelson. This would be a bit of a laugh since it was Nelson himself who was pushing the 'opinion' of 'Charles Day' on Twitter:
It smacks of a child-like desperation to believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy.
Question: Why would anyone go to such lengths if a deal with the EU wasn't vital to British interests?
EU laws clearly oblige Brussels to “conclude” a Brexit deal with the UK, says Charles Day https://t.co/ADLyJ1R0D8— Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) August 4, 2019
It smacks of a child-like desperation to believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy.
Question: Why would anyone go to such lengths if a deal with the EU wasn't vital to British interests?
The United Kingdom has become not so much an extension of the playing fields of Eton as the plaything of Etonians. We exist for the amusement of people who are taught from birth that they are 'effortlessly superior'. Cameron and Johnson are the 19th and 20th PMs to have come through Eton College, but none have been so reckless with the nation as these last two.
Cameron rolled the dice in 2016 with the referendum, lost, and simply walked away leaving us with three years of political turmoil. Now Johnson looks as if he's about to do the same. He's at the casino, piling all the nation's chips on one final bet. If he loses, and we crash out without a deal, he will certainly not stick around to rebuild it over the coming years, you can guarantee he will return to The Telegraph and spend his ill-gotten money with self-justifying articles how none of it was his fault.
Effortless superiority means never having to say you're sorry.
Stephen Barclay, the Brexit Secretary didn't go to Eton (he is the Lancashire born son of a Trade Union official) but behaves as if he did, telling the EU27 they must change the mandate given to Michel Barnier or prepare for the UK to self-harm.
Every time we threaten to exit without a deal, more investment switches from the UK to the EU. They must be rubbing their hands in Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris.
Sterling upate
The pound is down nearly 0.5% against the dollar in early trading this morning and 0.67% down against the Euro. This article in The Guardian says it all: Whatever they say about Brexit, sterling’s nosedive tells us the truth
Perhaps it's the reality on which Brexit's falsehoods will finally crash.
